Reel



y 1961 H. F. HAWKINS 2,986,356

REEL

Filed March 28. 1955 INVENTOR.

HERSCHEL F. HAWKINS Maw ATTORNEYS Un t d States Pam Q REEL Herschel F. Hawkins, Brookville, Ohio, assignor to The H. F. Hawkins & Son Company, Brookville, Ohio, a corporation of Ohio Filed Mar. 28, 1955, Ser- No. 497,121

1 Claim. (Cl. 242-118.6)

This invention relates to reels for wire and the like and particularly to an improved construction for such a reel and an improved method of manufacture thereof.

In the packaging of wires, cables and similar standlike materials, it is customary to wind them on to reels at the time of manufacture and thereby the material is convenient for handling and is retained inthe best possible condition. Also a reel, since it is a member that can easily be mounted for rotation, makes an ideal device on which to take up the product of a wire drawing machine or the like and a device from which the said product can readily be dispensed.

Reels of the nature referred to can be considered to fall into two broad classes; expendable reels and reusable reels.

The expendable reels are generally the smaller, lighter reels which are not subject to any severe usage and which, therefore, can be made light enough and cheap enough that they can be discarded after being used once.

The re-usable reels, which comprise the larger of the two general classes, are those that are usually employed for metal wires, cables and the like which are sutficiently heavy that the reel must be made fairly strong and heavy and thus represents sufiicient expense that it becomes an economic matter to arrange for the re-use of the reel.

With re-usable reels of this nature, the preferable materials to employ in the manufacture is metal or wood, although it will be apparent that other materials such as plastic, particularly plastic laminates or glass fiber reinforced plastic materials and the like could be utilized whenever possessed of suflicient strength.

Reels made of metal are usually relatively heavy and fairly expensive to manufacture and have the disadvam tage that the end members tend to bend under impact. Wooden reels, on the other hand, have certain advantages in that the material from which they are made is relatively cheap and plentiful, particularly in certain localities; the resulting reels are relatively light; and there is little or no chance that the reels will be damaged by impact short of that required to destroy the reel. It is in particular connection with reels manufactured of wood or wooden-like materials that the present invention is particularly concerned.

Wooden reels of the nature referred to generally consist of two end members or heads in the form of discs with rods, bars, or ports running between the end members forming a core structure for the reel on which is Having the foregoing in mind, it is a particular object of this invention to provide a wire reel of the nature referred to which not only avoids difliculties that have been encountered previously in connection with wire reels as to the relative twisting of the end members of the reel, but which also is rapid and inexpensive to manufacture.

A still further object of the present invention is the provision of a structure for a reel of the nature referred to and a method of manufacturing the reel such that it is possible to ship the reels knocked down to a point of use where they can be assembled and with the reels so assembled being as strong as if they were assembled at the point of manufacture of the components thereof.

A still further object is the provision of a method of manufacturing a reel of the nature referred to and a constructional arrangement thereof such that strong rigid reels can readily be assembled from individual components thereof with the simplest possible tools, in most cases simply a hammer or nailing machine.

Another object of this invention is to provide a reel construction of the nature referred to adapted for application to reels of widely varying sizes.

Another particular object is the provision of a method of forming the end members for wire reels and the like which is extremely rigid and inexpensive thereby eliminating one of the most costly steps in connection with the manufacture of wire reels and one of the steps in connection with which there is considerable difiiculty in arriving at a suitably strong reel.

In general, the objects of the present invention are obtained by providing the end members of the reel with rectangular holes spaced thereabout for receiving the rectangular ends of the core rods which have tenons formed on the ends thereof of a size to be closely received within said holes.

In assembling the reel, the rods are placed in one of the end members, a core sleeve is fitted over the rods to be supported thereby and to provide a round core on which the wire, cable or other material is received, the other end member is then fitted on to the free ends of the rods and then connection is made between the end members and the core rods, preferably by utilizing drive screws.

Drive screws have been found to be particularly useful in this connection because they hold more tightly than either a screw or a nail and firmly lock the end members to the core rods, thus preventing racking of the reel and imparting extremely long life to the reel while at the same time forming the sort of a connection I that can be accomplished by the simplest of tools and mounted a cylindrical member which may be of carda 1 unskilled labor.

A feature of my invention is the manner in which the end members are preferably formed. This is accomplished by stamping out the end members wherever the thickness thereof will permit this type of operation. The stamping out of the end members can be accomplished by stamping out either squares or rounds from strips or sheets of laminated wood such as plywood, composite wood or wooden-like material such as plastic reinforced with flock or glass fibers.

Where the end members are blanked out as squares, they are then stacked and cut out with a band saw and the like to their final round condition. All holes in the end members, however, including the square holes for receiving the ends of the core rods or bars are formed at the time of stamping out the end members.

The exact natures of the present invention and the manner in which the various objects, as well as still other objects and advantages, are attained will become more lhnarentup .1' f n to the follow g de c ptio ta en in connection with the accompanying drawings, in which:

Figure 1 is a perspective view showing a typical reel constructed according to my invention;

Figure 2 is a cross-section through the reel indicated by line 2-.2 on Figure 1;

Figure 3 is a longitudinal section through the reel indicated by line 33 on Figure 1;

Figure 4 is a perspective view showing the tenon formed on the end of one of the core rods; and

Figure 5 is a sectional view indicated by line 55 on Figure 1 drawn at greatly increased scale showing the drive screw connection of the core rods to the end mem bers.

Referring to the drawings somewhat more in detail and particularly Figures 1, 2 and 3, the reel according to this invention comprises end members and located therebetween is a cylindrical core sleeve 12 which may be of cardboard, sheet metal or any other suitably flexible strip material rolled to a cylinder of the proper size.

Inside core sleeve 12 and extending between the end members is a plurality of bars or rods 14 having tenons 16 formed on the ends thereof that are received in the correspondingly shaped holes 18 in the end members. The rods 14 may vary in number from three to eight, depending upon the size of the reel and the amount of support that is required for core sleeve 12 It is preferred that the connection between the end members and the rods 14 be made by means of the drive screws 20 which are driven in through the end members into the rods somewhat at an angle as will best be seen in Figure 5. These drive screws form an extremely rigid connection between the end members and the rods and, together with the rectangular tenons on the ends of the rods fitting closely within the rectangular holes in the end members prevent the undesired racking or relative twisting of the end members of the reel relative to each other.

The end members of the reel or at least one thereof, will be provided with apertures as at 22 that are for the purpose of receiving drive pins to locate and rotate the reel during take up and pay off operations.

There is also preferably provided in one or both heads an aperture as at 24 located close to the core sleeve 12 which is usable for securing the end of the material to be wound up on the reel.

A particularly important feature of the present invention resides in the fact that the component parts of the reel can be manufactured at some suitable location where materials are plentiful and inexpensive and the reels then shipped knocked down to their point of use or adjacent to a point of use of the reels.

The reels could then be assembled, on order, simply by assembling the component parts and driving the drive screws in place. It will be obvious that this will save a tremendous amount of storage and shipping space.

It has been mentioned that the end members are preferably stamped out and this can be accomplished in a hydraulic or mechanical press of suitable size with fairly simple punch and die members and it is preferred to form at least all of the holes in the end members in this manner although it will be apparent that the possibility exists of boring the holes, even including the rectangular holes for receiving the ends of the core rods.

With the thinner end members it is possible that they could be stamped out as rounds but with the thicker end 4 members a preferred practice ould be to stamp merely the holes in the end members and to cut them out round on a band saw.

It is contemplated that reels according to this invention will vary in size from about a five inch core and a sixteen inch head and about twelve inches long to a reel of about the size of a fourteen inch core with thirtyeight inch heads or end members and with all of the reels varying in length according to the purpose for which they are made.

The end members or heads may vary in thickness from about a quarter of an inch for small light reels to about two inches thick for the larger heavier reels that will be put to more severe use.

The core rods, or posts, are preferably square since that is the most inexpensive form in which the rods can be obtained, but may be round if preferred although in either case the tenon formed on the end of the rod or post will be rectangular, preferably square.

As to the drive screws 20, these will of course vary .in size for the different types of reels and I have found that about a two inch drive nail adequately secures end members or heads of one-half inch thickness and about a two and one-half inch nail would be employed for a head of three-quarters of an inch in thickness. The nails will vary according to the thickness of the heads in this mannet.

It will be understood that this invention is susceptible to modification in order to adapt it to different usages and conditions, and, accordingly, it is desired to comprehend such modifications within this invention as may fall within the scope of the appended claim.

I claim:

A wire reel comprising two circular head members arranged in spaced coaxial relationship, a sleeve of relatively thin material extending between said head members and coaxial therewith, a plurality of circumferentially spaced wooden rods of rectangular shaped cross section extending axially within said sleeve and contiguous with the inner sidewall of the sleeve, each of said rodshaving a rectangular shaped tenon on each outer end thereof, each said tenon having a cross sectional area less than the body of said rod and being adapted to fit snugly into a rectangular shaped mortise in one of said circular head members to. make a snug and tight jointure therewith, and means comprising a pair of drive screws disposed through said head members at the opposite ends of the reel and extending into the body of each of said rods adjacent each said tenon for firmly locking said head members to said rods whereby a strong, rigid reel structure is provided.

References Cited in the file of this patent UNITED STATESv PATENTS 992,098 Yanch t...... May 9, 191-1" 1,308,372 Rockwell July 1, 1919 1,677,515 Durand July 17, 1928 2,190,085 Scholl Feb. 13,1940 2,263,198 Valiton Nov. 18, 1941 2,292,545 Proctor Aug. 11, 1942 2,301,800 Bersie Nov. 10, 1942 2,353,216 Bodden July 11, 1944 2,609,162 Howsam Sept. '2, 1952 FOREIGN PATENTS- 417,677 Great Britain Oct. 10,1934 

